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The PIT Count is a high-stakes, time-compressed operation. Months of prep work go into executing a one-night process that directly informs homelessness measurement, funding, and resource allocation across the country.
Counties have to keep volunteer assignments, encampment locations, survey tools, and last-minute changes accurate and accessible for hundreds of people — many of whom only touch the process once a year.
In practice, information lives across email threads and SharePoint folders with mismatched access, so the same questions get answered repeatedly and urgent updates don’t reliably reach everyone. The cost: avoidable gaps in coverage and higher risk of errors on the one night that matters.
Exactly because the PIT Count requires alignment across different agencies and nonprofits, Roundtable is a natural fit. “As opposed to saying, oh, let me send this mail, or use this listserv, or look up people on an Excel spreadsheet — and just hope those are the right people — Roundtable brought everyone into one space and empowered our coordinators,” said Matt Finley, Interim Special Projects Administrator staffing the Maricopa Regional Continuum of Care in Arizona. “Roundtable was incredibly helpful for coordinating this year’s PIT Count across the county.”
“Our partners have given really positive feedback, they liked having Roundtable as a centralized location for information and communication,” said Finley. The platform supported over 85% of their partner jurisdictions for PIT Count operations. “Roundtable is easy for our partners to use. The arc of adoption across the jurisdictions we work with has been great.”
Results:
Across the country from Arizona, the nation’s capital was experiencing freezing conditions that raised safety concerns for the thousands of volunteers preparing for the PIT Count. This year’s outdoor canvassing portion of the count was canceled within the city of Washington, DC.
But the government of Prince William County, Virginia, had already implemented Roundtable across their Continuum of Care prior to 2026. So when the temperatures dropped, the county had a direct line to providers. “Our Continuum of Care workspace in Roundtable includes over 80% of the volunteers for the PIT Count,” said Dana Carey, Senior Business Services Administrator at the Prince William County Department of Social Services. They used Roundtable to collect fast feedback from volunteers, polling over 150 members instantly with a single post. “I asked everyone ‘what are your thoughts with this weather? Do you want to reschedule or keep the date?’” And before officially rescheduling, the county used Roundtable to poll volunteers on their availability for the new date.
Prince William County had never before rescheduled a PIT Count. For Carey, “Getting that live feedback was really essential. No one wants to have to reschedule something that took so much time to plan. But, at the end of the day, that was the best decision we had to make for our CoC.”
Getting the word out across the entire CoC was just as easy. Carey explained, “When we had to reschedule the PIT Count, we were able to instantly let everyone know using Civic Roundtable. And I can't tell you how much time that saved. In the past, for something like this we would have had to go and email everyone, people would miss the emails, and then they'd show up on the wrong day, wrong place, wrong time.”
Using Roundtable to adapt quickly and collectively to rapidly changing circumstances, Prince William County’s CoC was a resilient network. And even with the rescheduling, the PIT Count proceeded smoothly. “I think this was one of the best years we've ever had,” said Alicia La Patra, Senior Business Systems Analyst at the Prince William County Department of Social Services. “We have the most team leads we've ever had. We had great coverage. We've come a long way.”
Results:
Looking to the future, both teams are focused on deepening what Roundtable makes possible. In Arizona, Finley wants to use the platform to help jurisdictional coordinators learn from each other — sharing best practices and building guardrails to protect individuals' privacy during and after the count. In Virginia, La Patra is already thinking about next year: “We'd like to have that space where the volunteers themselves can communicate with each other, message each other, and sign up for text messages. There's definitely room for growth."
When every person counts — literally — having the right infrastructure to coordinate, communicate, and adapt isn't just an operational advantage. It's the difference between getting the count right and no count at all.
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